


Just killed a man

by StrictlyNoFrills



Category: Star Trek: Picard
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, From various perspectives, Gen, Juros Drabbles, Mostly unconnected drabbles, Season One Juros Drabbles, This Drabble collection is not spoiler free
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-11
Updated: 2020-03-26
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:54:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 6,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22666603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StrictlyNoFrills/pseuds/StrictlyNoFrills
Summary: Drabbles about Agnes Jurati and our irascible captain.
Relationships: Agnes Jurati/Cristóbal Rios, Captain Cristobal Rios & Raffi Musiker, Pre-Agnes Jurati/Captain Cristobal Rios
Comments: 97
Kudos: 109





	1. Don’t even think about it

“Don’t even think about it,” Raffi warned flatly, eyeing the way Rios stared after Little Miss Scientist as she followed JL to the sleeping quarters. Raffi had nothing against the science track, but those wide-eyed innocents who had no concept of life outside of a lab? Those she had a problem with. And now she was stuck with one, because JL could never resist picking up strays.

”Think about what?”

Raffi snorted. “Don’t try to be cute, either. You’re terrible at it.”

Rios shot her an unimpressed look. “Fine. Why should I not think about it?”

”Because I know Picard. He’s already protective of his newest pet, and he’ll do anything for someone if he feels responsible for them.” Just look at where they were now, chasing after a girl JL had never even met because her twin sister had come to him from out of the blue. True, it was slightly more complicated than that, given the girl’s origins, but the point remained. JL had been perfectly content to ignore the rest of the world (...to ignore Raffi), but the moment some lost girl showed up in his life, he was ready to take on the universe for her, and since that didn’t pan out, now he was going to do whatever it took to protect her twin.

Because that was just JL’s way.

”Then what happened with you?”

She tried not to let on how deeply that little dig made its way under her skin, only clenching her jaw. “I ask myself that every damn day.”


	2. In his image

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Something about the captain makes it hard for Agnes to keep her mouth shut.
> 
> It's a problem.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so the tags say "fluff and angst", but for some reason, so far, it's been mostly angst? I don't know, guys. Maybe it's just this show. I love it, but it lends itself to some serious whumpage.

"Why do you hate yourself?"

It slipped out. She wasn't quite sure what it was about him (that was _such_ a lie), but when she looked at him, her verbal filter ceased to function. Just - goodbye self-control. Goodbye discretion. Hello foot, yes, why not insert into mouth?

She raised a hand and clamped it over her traitorous lips to stop any further bouts of uninvited and most assuredly unwelcome questioning and stared up at Captain Rios with wide, apologetic eyes.

"Excuse me?"

He didn't even sound irritated. That was the worst part. From what she had seen so far, Captain Rios was almost constantly irked by something or other. Yet now, after she'd pried into something so deeply personal, apropos of absolutely nothing - at least to his mind, she was sure, as there had been ample reasoning for the many questions running rampant through her overly analytical head, hence one of them finally springing free and landing her in this socially untenable position - he simply sounded mildly surprised.

When she was finally reasonably certain her mouth would not betray her by running away with itself again, she lowered her hand just enough to be able to breathe, "I am so, _so_ sorry. Please, just, forget that I said anything. Um. I'll just go and do - something... somewhere that isn't here."

She had come down to the bridge in search of company after waking from another in a long series of nightmares about the man she had killed in Picard's house, and the living room littered with bodies. Only, once she reached the bridge, she found Captain Rios in the midst of griping at one of the emergency holograms and deactivating it mid-sentence, and into the silence that had followed she'd blurted her question.

Clearly, coming here was a mistake.

She turned with every intention of fleeing to the furthest reaches of the ship, but a single word rooted her feet to the floor of the bridge.

"Wait." That was all it took, spoken in a far softer tone than she was accustomed to hearing from this particular man. With an aching slowness, Agnes turned back towards Captain Rios, catching her bottom lip between her teeth and eyeing him with trepidation. "What makes you think that?"

She glanced down, opting to study her shoes for a moment to give herself a chance to gather some degree of composure. Then she forced herself to lift her head up and look him in his dark eyes. "Like I said, just forget that I said anything. I shouldn't have asked. It's really none of my business."

"And yet you did ask," he said. "So now I'm curious."

Those eyes might as well be considered a deadly weapon. Some sort of intelligence gathering tool, at least. She may have been an abysmal liar, but keeping things hidden comprised a considerable part of her job. All the years of abiding faithfully by NDAs she had signed meant absolutely nothing in the face of that steady, patient look, as though he knew that all he needed to do was wait and she would give him everything.

He was right. He was right, and it was humiliating. "It's just, all of your emergency holograms are patterned after you. You could base them off of anyone you wanted, but you chose to make them look like yourself. Normally I would say that that was a sign of extreme narcissism, but you can't stand them. In fact, you do everything you can to get rid of them the moment they appear. So, the only thing I can think of that might explain it is if you..."

"Hate myself," he concluded when she discovered that she couldn't go on. "Well," he said, affecting a levity he obviously didn't feel, "you're not wrong."

"But _why?"_

She wanted to smack herself. Hadn't she quite recently resolved not to allow herself to blurt out personal questions exactly like the one that just fell out of her mouth?

Captain Rios's mouth tightened for a moment as he gazed at her, likely weighing her and finding her horribly wanting, and then he told her, "Because I didn't die."


	3. The Pertinent Questions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hoo, boy. This latest episode was quite the wild ride. I could geek out forever about how the parallels between Elnor being d'Artagnan in Space and Sulu also being d'Artagnan in Space make my little TOS heart happy, but I'll just leave it at that to at least _try_ and retain what little dignity I have left.

Agnes smiled as she watered Cristobal's plant again. It may not have been the most exciting task in the world, but seeing something living amongst this vast nothingness gave her a bit of joy... and something to do.

"Why do you not simply take the captain as your lover?"

Agnes jumped and then whirled around. She eyed Elnor and laughed incredulously, shaking her head and closing her eyes before setting the replicated watering can down and pinning Elnor with a stare that was half wonder, half despair. "I'm sorry? Did you seriously just ask me that?"

She had been right. She had been so right. The Path of Absolute Candor was already a giant pain in her ass, and Elnor had only pledged his sword to Picard's cause and joined their ragtag crew aboard _La Sirena_ a few days ago.

Was her own comparative youth this taxing to the rest of the crew, or was this a result of Elnor's bizarrely sheltered upbringing and subsequently odd social skills? It couldn't have been easy or enlightening, growing up as the only male amongst Romulan warrior nuns, the existence of which still occasionally threw Agnes for a loop. 

Probably in the grand scheme of things, she _shouldn't_ consider that the strangest thing she had discovered on this adventure to date, but it remained somewhat of a mental sticking point. 

"Yes. Are you going to answer my question, or was that an attempt at evasion?"

She puffed up her cheeks and then let out a heavy stream of air, as though popping a balloon. Okay, then. Elnor really wasn't going to let this go. Not that she was particularly surprised. So far as she could discern, letting things go wasn't in his nature. An admirable quality in a warrior, she was sure, but an aggravating one in a naive, curious crewmate. 

"Yes, fine, I will answer your question. I haven't 'taken Cristobal as a lover' because I'm not really interested in casual relationships. Those are fine for other people, but I'm more of a serial monogamist."

"How do you know that a relationship with the captain would be casual?"

Her eyes bugged out and she stared at Elnor for a moment. "Are you kidding?" She waved her hands dismissively. "Never mind, of course you're not. That wouldn't exactly be very candid of you." She swallowed and tried to come up with a way to explain it that Elnor would understand. He wasn't stupid. No one who could move the way he did, almost intuiting the movements of others before they even knew they would make them, could be. But there was so much that he had never had the chance to learn.

When she wasn't busy feeling exasperated by the gaps in his knowledge, it kind of broke her heart.

Taking a deep breath, she told him, "I don't think he's really in a good place, emotionally, for a healthy, committed relationship."

"He does seem very sad and angry," Elnor agreed.

"Exactly," Agnes said, grateful that she had gotten her point across.

"Perhaps a romantic relationship would make him less depressed."

... _Or not_.

"It might," she said, "but it might not. And either way, that isn't really fair to me, or fair to him. Because I can't be responsible for his mental health. And even aside from that, let's say we do try being together, and he does feel less depressed for a while, but then things between us don't work out. What's to stop him from falling right back into his depression all over again?"

Elnor tilted his head slightly. "I don't know."

"Neither do I. So, even if he was interested, which he probably isn't, by the way, now is not the right time for the two of us to start dating." She rolled her eyes at herself. "To the extent that two people are even capable of dating each other when they live right on top of each other the way that we do on this ship."

"But what if things do work out?" Elnor asked, kindly - or perhaps just doggedly - ignoring her brief bout of rambling.

She shook her head, feeling her shoulders slump. "I would love to believe that that would be a possibility. I just don't."

Elnor frowned lightly. "You are an optimist. Why are you not optimistic about this?"

"A lifetime of experience."

"I believe that you are doing yourself and the captain a disservice. You should have more faith."

"Faith, huh?" she asked, huffing a laugh that was barely audible. "Not really a whole lot of cause for that in my line of work."

"I do not believe that, or you would not have stayed in your department at the Daystrom Institute after the synth program was shut down." He dipped his head towards her and cupped his hands at chest height and then departed, leaving Agnes to stare after his retreating back.

What had just happened?


	4. A Vast Expanse of Nothing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So, this is in response to the scene where Agnes interrupts Cris while he’s reading because space is boring.

He was unprepared for the faint flicker of something in his chest at hearing of one of Dr. Jurati’s past associations. It wasn’t strong enough to be labeled jealousy, which was good, because that would have been ridiculous. He had never been the jealous type, and there was no cause for it in this instance. 

Cristobal was too broken, too burnt out with far too many spreading fault lines to allow himself to care about another person. The image of his captain’s splattered blood and grey matter superimposed itself upon the scene before him for a moment before it dissipated, and he clenched his jaw and carefully kept the direction of his thoughts from showing on his face.

But still, he felt _something_ at the knowledge that their resident scientist had lived with another man.

No. Not ‘another’ man, because that suggested a connection between the two of them that simply wasn’t possible, and after all, he hardly knew her. There was no reason - absolutely none at all - for this fleeting feeling, which was replaced by an unwarranted degree of satisfaction when he learned seconds later that this other lover of paper books was Dr. Jurati’s father.

Completely absurd. One moment, he was alone, and the next, all these people started invading his ship, and now the gaping hole where his heart used to be had suddenly decided to begin having _opinions_ about things.

He told himself he wasn’t relieved when Raffi showed up to air her latest grievance, and didn’t care in the slightest how little he actually believed it.


	5. If only

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I mean, did you guys honestly think I was just going to let _that scene_ slip by unremarked?
> 
> Also, the title of this Drabble collection has become incredibly ironic.

She wanted to scream. Cry. Claw her own eyes and brains out.

She wanted to go back ten, fifteen years and tell the girl who was so thirsty for knowledge, purpose, pride to stop. Turn back the other way and run. Find some other beautiful, wonderful, terrible thing to obsess over.

“See that woman with the perfect military hair and sharp, black uniform? Tell her to take a hike in space, Agnes. She’s no good for you. Starfleet is no good for you. Daystrom will destroy you,” she would say, and find any and every way to make her younger self believe it.

Or perhaps she would simply shoot the ‘fleet recruiter in the face before she could even begin the pitch. Before she even made it to the front door of the Jurati household.

But she couldn’t do any of it, any more than she could undo the dreadful work of her bloodstained hands.

... There wasn’t any blood. Not really. Her mentor’s death was clean, even if it wasn’t peaceful or without pain. Yet she felt the unclean tackiness of her fingers and palms, smelled the iron and salt as though they were coated, were dripping with it.

She sat on the edge of her bed for hours after realizing that staring up at the ceiling in her quarters did no good. When she finally admitted that being alone with her thoughts wouldn’t help either, she ventured out of her room, uncaring of her state of undress. No one aboard _La_ _Sirena_ would hurt her, so long as they never discovered the truth (and she was under no illusions of the inevitable discovery, but not yet... not yet). She was the only threat here.

If she were less trapped within her own head, the sight of Cristobal kicking a ball around in nothing more than a pair of shorts would have done something for her. Not even that ridiculous disguise he wore on Free Cloud managed to diminish his beauty, after all, and Cristobal stripped down to his most honest, relaxed self, with no defenses and no mask? He was glorious. 

As it was, tonight she hardly cared.

He was warm, and he was willing, and he was sweet. He demanded nothing and gave everything, and Agnes wanted to cry again, because if things had been different. If they had met years ago, or in a world without Section 31 and the Mars massacre and Romulan spies. If he’d been on shore leave, and she’d been at some conference, and they simply met, just a man and a woman with no secrets and no darkness drenching their souls...

“I would have loved you,” she whispered, staring down at his sleeping form, his glistening skin in bright relief against the drab grey sheets of his bed with its regulation corners. “And I think you would have loved me.”

Then she shook her head at herself and picked her clothes up off of the floor, slipping them on as though she were slipping back into herself, or at least some semblance of the self the others knew her to be.

If things had been different, she thought again as she stood at the door to his quarters, listening to the pneumatic hiss as it slid open.

If. But now she would never know.


	6. Neurotoxic effects

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This episode 7 piece is so, _so_ late, but better late than never?

Chills broke out over the surface of her skin as what she’d suspected became a certainty, standing there watching Cristobal try to outmaneuver a Romulan snakehead ship, only to be thwarted again and again.

 _This is all my fault_.

Commodore Oh had placed that tracker in her hand mere moments after invading her mind, and Agnes had felt helpless to do anything other than swallow it.

The fact that she had to chew it first made it all the worse, because it wasn’t as though Commodore Oh had held her down, plugged her nose, and shoved it down her throat.

No. She’d simply forced her way into Agnes’s mind and showed her horrors she still saw any time she closed her eyes – when she didn’t see Bruce’s veins bulging in his face and neck, his eyes blown wide with pain and terror and betrayal.

But even though Agnes had felt trapped in that moment, Commodore Oh’s cold, dark eyes watching her impassively, as though accepting the tracker was a foregone conclusion, Agnes was the one who had put the little blue thing, which had looked so innocuous and yet so alluring, upon her tongue. She was the one who crushed it between her top and bottom molars, felt it burst in her mouth and swallowed it down.

She was the one who had damned them all.

Her stomach roiled, and she tried her best to persuade Cristobal and Raffi to turn _La_ _Sirena_ around.

She’d already killed Bruce. Must she get these people who had become her friends killed as well?

How many deaths would be on her head before everything was said and done?

When she first agreed to join Picard on this mission and lead Starfleet intelligence agents to him and to Soji, she honestly believed that she was doing the right thing. She had helped bring Soji and Daj into the world, those two harbingers of destruction, and she should be one of the people to take them out of it.

But as the weeks passed, and the effects of the mind-meld began to fade, she began to wonder.

Killing Bruce was the last straw.

Nothing that left her feeling that hollowed out and sick with horror and shame could be the right thing.

She was a scientist – and not just any scientist. A scientist in pursuit of artificial life.

Always, her hands had been meant to create, not to destroy, and yet she had killed two beings since Commodore Oh barged her way into Agnes’s life.

What else had she agreed to do that was anathema to her when she knew her own mind?

Her eyes drifted over to the back of Cristobal’s head.

 _No_. That had been all her. Sharing his bed may not have been the best decision she had ever made, but at least she could honestly say it was her own.

And as she watched him doing his best to evade the Romulan ship dogging his own lovely lady, the first germ of an idea took root in her mind.

She tried to tear that little germ out, tried to convince Cris and Raffi once again to leave Picard and Soji to their fate, because at least if Agnes was nowhere near them, they might have a fighting chance, but as she might have predicted, they both said no.

Feeling defeated, she let Raffi lead her away to try and drown out the monsters in her head with more sugar and fat than she would normally eat in a week.

The red velvet was perfect – she could see that and smell that, and feel the moistness on her tongue – but she could barely taste it.

She could feel it settling uncertainly in her already shaky stomach, though.

Still, eating it gave her hands and her mouth something to do, and it kept Raffi close by. She needed someone, and since Cristobal was occupied, and she was fairly certain she’d managed to piss him off, she was grateful to have Raffi there. She liked Raffi, for all that Raffi didn’t seem to like herself.

Agnes could relate. She didn’t much care for herself right now either.

While Raffi replicated a glass of chocolate milk, Agnes poked at the little germ and discovered that it had become a sprout.

She quailed and shoved another bite of red velvet in her mouth.

* * *

Her heart actually stopped beating in her chest for a moment when Cristobal said that he thought he knew how they were being followed. This was both what she had been trying to accomplish and what she had been dreading since the ship first started tailing them. When Cristobal told her that he thought Raffi was the one being tracked, Agnes couldn’t believe it. Her heart began beating again, at a much higher rate than normal, a mixture of panic and incredulity pumping her blood through her veins furiously.

How could he possibly think his old friend would betray him that way? Raffi had her faults, and she certainly had a grudge against Picard, but she clearly loved Cristobal. It was unthinkable.

Agnes couldn’t let Cristobal continue to think the worst of Raffi. Not when he had so few friends to begin with, and when his ignorance of the truth put him and Raffi in danger. She sucked in a breath, bracing herself to tell him everything – every last, terrible detail, “It’s not Raffi.”

“So, what, it’s you?” He laughed. He _laughed_. _Oh, Cris. You have no idea_. “You’ve been stuck on _La_ _Sirena_ since we left Earth.”

– and then Raffi shouted for Cristobal, and he looked in Agnes’s eyes, and she could see the faintest hint of realization in his eyes, coupled with denial, before he had to run out and deal with the Romulan ship again.

And Agnes was left with a choice that wasn’t really a choice at all.

That little sprout had taken root and grown tall and strong in her mind, and she knew there was no point in trying to tear it out. She didn't even want to try anymore.

This had to stop.

She had the power to make it stop.

Her breath began coming faster and faster as she gathered up the nerve to do what needed to be done.

She couldn’t allow Raffi and Cristobal to pay for her moment of weakness on Earth, and she couldn’t endanger Picard, either. Nor, in her heart of hearts, did she want to harm Soji, the culmination of years of work.

If some part of her wanted this for selfish reasons, wanted to silence the screaming in her head for at least a little while, then that was no one’s business but her own.

She stumbled over to the replicator and selected the hypo she needed and tried to convince herself that she could go through with it.

As she raised the hypo to her neck, her hand trembled, and she ran through the past few weeks in her mind – Picard’s visits; Commodore Oh; killing that Romulan – her first kill, but not her last; meeting Cristobal and Raffi; picking up Elnor; the dogfight with that Romulan warbird; meeting Seven of Nine; manning the transporter as _La Sirena_ orbited Free Cloud; tending to Bruce while Picard was in the sickbay and then standing over Bruce as he died; throwing herself into Cristobal’s arms for a few hours of comfort; the crew splitting apart and thinking, _Maybe this could be a good thing_ ; trying to convince Raffi and Cristobal to turn this stupid ship around; Raffi being so comforting and understanding when Agnes absolutely did not deserve it; Cristobal frustrated, Cristobal concerned, Cristobal confiding in her, Cris, Bruce, Cris, Bruce, Cris, Bruce…

_What am I doing?_

_What have I_ done?

She depressed the hypo and felt fire spreading through her veins. She tried to get over to the biobed, but her limbs wouldn’t cooperate, and she fell to the floor, her body twitching violently. As the world faded away, she looked up into a pair of worried eyes and a voice that wasn’t quite right.

_No medical emergency here, Emil._

For the first time since this whole nightmare began, everything was exactly as it should be.


	7. Albatross

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This drabble deals with the repercussions of The Admonition, though it is set far, far in the future, when our ragtag crew are finally making their way home.
> 
> Warning for Agnes heavily contemplating and coming close to committing suicide.

Emil appeared in Cris’s quarters, clearing his throat and dragging Cris almost instantly from an uneasy slumber.

“ _Que_?” he grumbled, rolling over from where his face had been mashed into his pillow to lay upon his back and glare at his EMH blearily.

“My apologies, but you did order me to inform you any time Dr. Jurati appeared in sickbay, Captain.”

Cris froze for a moment, the last vestiges of sleep fleeing from his brain and leaving behind an undeniable sense of urgency. He pointed at Emil. “Get back there now and keep her from doing anything stupid until I can get there myself.” He jumped out of bed and snatched a rumpled, ratty sweater out of his closet as the EMH hastened to comply, disappearing as quickly and soundlessly as he’d arrived.

As Cris ran out of his quarters, he shrugged on the sweater, choosing not to worry about shoes. He would have foregone a shirt as well had he not remembered what happened the last time he was around Agnes without one. Now was not the time.

He raced through the corridors, reaching sickbay and skidding to a halt. No need to rush in and cause her to panic.

Taking a deep breath, he strode in and found Emil speaking to Agnes with gentle urgency where she crouched on the floor near the replicator, trying to persuade her to put down the hypo she held to her neck.

 _Not again!_ he railed as images of Pops with his blood splattered all over the bulkhead burst unbidden into his mind’s eye. He shoved them away.

He knocked on the edge of the biobed to announce his presence, and Agnes jumped, her watery, glazed eyes flying to meet his. She looked back at the EMH and her rosebud mouth formed an irritated moue. “ _Et tu_ , Emil?” she said bitterly.

“Hey,” Cris said, coming closer as Emil deactivated himself, Cris’s eyes now fixed on the hypo, “this one’s on me. I told him to come and get me the next time you set foot in sickbay on your own.”

She glared at him for a moment before softening, though the knuckles of her right hand remained white with tension where they gripped the handle of the hypo. With a barely-there huff of a laugh, she conceded, “Yeah, I guess that’s fair.”

“Why are you doing this, _querida_?” The endearment slipped out without his permission, and he swore at himself silently with a venom and creativity that would have made Emmet proud. “Soji and her siblings are fine. Oh will never touch you again. We’re almost home. There’s no need for this.”

A laugh tinged with tears escaped her trembling mouth and she shook her head. “This was always going to happen at some point, Cristobal. Here. Some penal colony. My office in Okinawa. The moment Oh shoved her poison into my head, all roads led to this.” She sniffled and then swallowed roughly. “I have been fighting this for _so long_. But I can’t anymore. I just can’t.”

“Yes, you can,” he said, bending down to sit beside her, the coldness of the sickbay floor seeping into his butt, thighs, and calves, barely shielded by his thin, soft black sleep pants. “You can. I’ll help you.”

“ _Why_?” she whispered. “What’s the point? We did what we were supposed to. Bruce is g- _gone_ because I killed him, and Soji and her siblings don’t need me. Nobody does.”

He dragged his eyes away from the hypo at that and shook his head at her as he stared into her eyes. “That is not true.”

“Cris,” she sighed, the first time she’d taken the liberty of using his nickname, outside of an emergency. Well, he amended to himself, outside of their usual sort of emergency. This definitely counted as one, albeit of a different kind. He couldn’t solve this problem with a blast of phaser fire or stand back and let Soji and Elnor decimate their enemies. “I’m a disaster. A shell of the person I used to be. You don’t need me.”

“And what, you think I’m not? You know what happened to my captain. You know what I did to Jana and Beautiful Flower’s bodies. You think you’re the only one around here who’s broken? I’ve got news for you.”

“You’ll get better,” she said, finally getting distracted enough from her goal to loosen her grip upon the hypo. “You _are_ getting better, all the time. I’ve seen it. But me? I’m drowning, and if you try to save me, all I’ll do is drag you down with me.”

“I don’t believe that,” Cris said, reaching out to carefully pull the hypo out of her hand, taking advantage of her slackened grip and setting the device aside. “And I don’t think that you really believe that either, or else you would have been dead before I even got here.” He scooped her up and pulled her into his lap, wrapping one arm around her shoulders and using his free hand to cup the back of her head, pressing a kiss to her forehead before bringing her head down to rest in the crook of his neck, all his good intentions about keeping this platonic while she was in such a vulnerable state flying out the airlock. “I’ve got you, _querida_ ,” he promised, caving to the inevitable and admitting that the pet name wasn’t going away. “And I’m an excellent swimmer,” he added, trying to add a little bit of levity to the moment. “I won’t let you drown.”

“You’re not worried?” she asked, her words slightly muffled against his skin.

“About what?”

With another miserable little laugh, she said, “I’ve already killed one lover. Who’s to say I’m not some kind of soulless black widow?”

He shook his head and held her tighter. “You told me a long time ago that you weren’t going to do that again. Besides, I’ve seen the way Bruce’s death has eaten away at you. You’re the last person I need to be afraid of.”

She sucked in a deep, shuddering breath. “Okay, but just. Promise me that you won’t let me hurt you.”

“I can’t do that. We’re people, Agnes. We’re going to hurt each other sometimes.”

“No, I know,” she had to stop and clear her throat before she could go on. “I know that. But I mean, if I ever – if something goes wrong. If someone like Oh ever gets hold of me again and messes with my head –“

“I’ll keep us both safe,” he told her. “As best as I can.”

“Okay,” she sighed, her body going limp against his, letting him support all her weight. “Okay.”

“So, no more hypos?”

“No more.”

“And you’ll come to me or to someone else when you’re feeling like this?”

She was silent for a few beats too many.

“Hey,” he said, jostling her gently. “You don’t have to talk to me, but you do have to talk to somebody. Emil. Raffi. Picard.” He paused and then said, “Maybe not Picard.”

Tiny puffs of amusement tickled the skin of his neck. “No, probably not. He’s come a long way, and it’s been ages since he said anything about me turning myself in for what I did to Bruce, but I don’t think he and I will ever be comfortable enough with each other for that. What I did… It really hurt him. But yes. I will talk to someone.”

“Thank you,” he breathed, closing his eyes in relief.

He felt her nuzzle into him further, though he hadn’t previously thought that was possible. “Pretty sure I should be the one saying that.”

“Just stay with me. That’s the only thanks I need.”

Agnes snorted. “That’s not thanks, Cris. That’s hanging an albatross from your neck.”

“Hey,” he chided gently. “Stop that.”

“… Yeah, okay.”

He rose from the sickbay floor, adjusting his hold on her and trying not to grunt from the exertion – for someone who seemed so small, she weighed more than he’d expected, or perhaps he just wasn’t as young has he used to be – and strode out of sickbay, heading towards the bridge. He wasn’t ready to let her out of his sight yet, but his butt was getting numb, and he didn’t think either of them needed to be in each other’s quarters right now.

When they reached the bridge, he settled them in his chair and watched the stars streaking by on the viewscreen, humming his mother’s lullaby and running his fingers through Agnes’s curls as she slowly drifted off to sleep.

 _I’ve got you_ , he swore again silently as he listened to her almost inaudible snores and snuffles, overcome with a wave of fondness and fierce, deep sense of protectiveness. _I won’t let anything happen to you. Not even yourself._


	8. The greatest of these

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A post episode 9 fic. Yes, I know it's a bit late - I haven't been in a writing mood recently, so as happy as the Juros bits of ep. 9 made me, I couldn't quite seem to put anything down on paper. I had to wait until the right mood and the right idea struck me.
> 
> Title is a reference to 1 Corinthians 13:13.

The scents of rich earth and dewy grass filled the air, and radiant heat caressed pale skin. Beneath a pair of black sunglasses, a pair of hazel eyes opened languidly and stared up at the seemingly endless expanse of cloudless blue sky.

Agnes let out a languorous sigh and shifted minutely upon the Adirondack chair, basking in the peace and the sunshine.

Cris was right. Coming to Nepenthe was the right thing to do, and not just for Picard, though Agnes felt certain that being in the healing atmosphere was helping him to grow accustomed to his new body and to come to terms with everything that had happened.

The longer they stayed here, the more Agnes could feel the effects of Commodore Oh’s mind meld, and the subsequent meld with Sutra, growing fainter. Her thoughts were her own, her emotions no longer tainted by those of others consumed with a relentless drive for destruction. In her heart of hearts, Agnes had always been a creator, and the foreign motives left behind in the wake of the two mind melds had left her with a cognitive dissonance which had wreaked havoc on her psyche that had affected her body as well, leaving her nauseated and shaky, and prone to monstrous headaches.

Most of that damage was gone now, and Agnes reveled in regaining the sanctity of her sense of self, as well as the lack of pain.

She wanted to thank Cris, but she wasn’t sure how to go about it. He grew skittish any time his actions were praised directly, but she did not want the meaning behind whatever she might do to be mistaken.

“You are thinking about your young captain again,” Deanna noted, her heavily accented voice warm with gentle amusement.

“I doubt Cristobal would agree with being described as young,” Agnes said, glancing over at her companion, who lounged upon another Adirondack chair a few feet away, looking resplendent in a turquoise one-piece bathing suit, her long, thick hair piled up on top of her head to allow the sun to reach as much of her neck as possible. “And he certainly isn’t mine.”

“Isn’t he? He seems to think so.”

Shaking her head, Agnes looked back up at the brilliant blue canopy. “He deserves better.”

“Better than the woman who risked her life to save a man she barely knew? Who tries every day to atone for something that, so far as I can tell, was not even within her ability to fight? One might say that it is Captain Rios who does not deserve you.”

Agnes sat up and stared at Deanna, who still sprawled peacefully upon her own chair, her eyes closed in apparent bliss. “That’s ridiculous,” she said. “Cris is one of the best people I know, and I’m…” _a murderer_. “Not.”

At last, Deanna opened her eyes and met Agnes’s gaze, examining her with the sort of gentle compassion Agnes had come to expect from her in the weeks since they had arrived here. “You, Agnes Jurati, are a far better person than you give yourself credit for. But let me tell you something: whether or not we love someone has precious little to do with that person deserving our love. If it did, I doubt we would love anyone at all. Love is not rational. It cannot be dictated by logic or calculation. It cannot be balanced on some sort of scale.”

“So, I should, what? Just go with it?” Agnes asked, her incredulity making her tone a bit more acerbic than normal.

Deanna remained unruffled. Because of course she did. Deanna Riker was as strong and steady as one of the mammoth trees surrounding the Riker cabin. “Only you can decide that – for yourself. You cannot make the decision for Captain Rios.”

“Make what decision for me?” Cris asked, his voice coming from behind Agnes and causing her to jump slightly in her chair before she twisted around to peer up at him, admiring the lack of stress in his dark eyes and the smoothness of his features. The job must have gone well, though Agnes had not had much cause to expect a simple delivery to be overly challenging. Cris had called it a milk run when Raffi told him about it; Raffi punched him in the shoulder in retaliation and told him, _After everything that happened with Soji, we could use a milk run or two_. Cris hadn’t been able to come up with an argument for that. 

“You’re back!” Agnes said, unable and uninclined to fight the delighted grin spreading across her face. She glanced behind him, searching. “Where’s Raffi?”

“Checking on Picard.” He stepped closer and cupped her cheek with his large hand, his slender fingers slotting easily into her curls.

Her cheeks warmed though she knew Deanna would not be bothered by seeing such an intimate gesture. It had become a habit of his, as though Cris thought he could erase Commodore Oh and Sutra’s touches, though theirs went far deeper.

“I should go say hi,” Agnes said, though she was reluctant to pull away. Good intentions or no, there was something about Cris that pulled her in, like a sun dragging a moon inexorably into its orbit.

“In a little bit,” Cris said softly, running his thumb lightly over her lips, sending a warm shiver down her spine. “After you’ve stopped avoiding the question.”

There was a light creaking of wood against wood and then the sound of feet hitting the grass. “I think I’ll go see where Kestra has got to,” Deanna said, clearly giving them a moment to themselves. The soft, slowly fading sound of her footsteps signaled her departure, and left Agnes staring up at Cris, transfixed.

“What were you and Mrs. Riker talking about?”

Agnes considered coming up with something trite and brushing the matter off, but she dismissed the idea almost immediately. When she wasn’t under the influence of half Romulan, half Vulcan spies or trying to save someone’s life, Agnes Jurati was a terrible liar. Her father used to tell her she was an open book.

She covered his hand with her own and turned just enough to press a kiss to the center of his palm. “This,” she said, her lips brushing over his skin. “We were talking about this.”


End file.
